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Victoria

“Mabs Does Movies” wants to bring you a recommendation from the two most popular streaming platforms every week (Netflix and Amazon Video) to indulge your binge watching ways. Here’s this week’s “Netflix Flim of the Week”.

Black screen. House music plays in the background. Open shot of our protagonist Victoria, a young, beautiful Spanish woman in a nightclub in Berlin. Its 4am, she’s alone and she’s dancing by herself. The music is the drug she needs to feel alive. She takes a break and goes to the bar to order a shot. A good looking bartender serves her. She tries to chat him up but he doesn’t care. She looks disappointed, has the shot, and goes to the ladies bathroom. There’s a massive queue and she can’t be bothered to wait to use the stall. She’s tired, calls it a night and grabs her coat. She needs to open the café in a few hours time and she needs some sleep. She gets interrupted by four German guys being kicked out of the club. One of them, Sonne, starts talking to her but the bouncer tells him and his friends to leave before he gets the chance to know anything about Victoria. She giggles, walks out of the club, and walks towards her bicycle. She sees the four guys again and Sonne goes straight up to her and starts charming her off her feet. He introduces her to his three friends and tells her that she needs to join them for one beer as its one of his friends’ birthday. Reluctant at first, she joins these four strangers for that drink…

And so begins the story of “Victoria”, a lonely Spanish girl ( played by the amazing Laia Costa) living in a city very alien to her, whos life changes one very early morning after a chance meeting with four strangers. I heard about this a year ago but never got the chance to see it when it was on limited release here in the UK. How great it was to stumble upon it on Netflix a few weeks ago while scrolling through the endless amount of content the platform has to offer. A stunning, tense thriller which twists and turns throughout its two-hour running time. What’s really special about it though is that the whole film is one single take (a technological achievement in itself), meaning the camera does not cut at anytime during the whole film; you are the 6th stranger with these characters on their night out. You feel like you’re having a drink with them or being the awkward 3rd wheel whenever there is an intimate scene. There’s not many films like it out there and its one I recommend you experiencing.